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Laddar... Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel (urspr publ 2010; utgåvan 2010)av Robert Conroy
VerksinformationRed Inferno 1945 av Robert Conroy (2010)
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. 3 stars. As purely an entertaining read, it met that goal, but as an alternate history, it fell incredibly flat. There were simply too many wild assumptions that didn't make sense. First, the author stated several times that Germany invaded Russia in 1940 (in actuality, it was 1941). Not an egregious error, but it showed that there wasn't any sort of research was conducted in preparation to writing this book. An editor should have caught this one. Second, the way that the author portrays the American military as being stretched thin to the point of being unable to provided any backup to the troops already in Europe was completely wrong. The American military was gearing up to invade Japan in 1945 (in case the atomic bomb didn't work), and these troops could have easily been redirected. This was a major error in the book, and hard to overlook. Third, I find it highly unlikely that American troops would have taken the Germans in as allies so soon after the atrocities they found in the concentration camps. I just don't see this happening, even against a greater military force such as the Soviet Union. Aside from these errors, it was an entertaining read. Just don't take it as an alternate history that "could have" happened. The 'What if?' premiss of Red Inferno is a good one and given the state of affairs in the final months of WWII, one that was entirely possible. What if, Conroy wonders, while they rushed to capture Berlin, hopefully capture Hitler alive and at the same time exact the maximum possible revenge for the atrocities committed against them - both real and imagined - the Russians had decided the chance and opportunity was there to continue on past Berlin? What if they had decided to continue the war past the shut-off date we all know and continue onwards to take the whole of Germany, then continue on even further into Holland, Belgium and ultimately France? What if they had decided the Eastern European countries they captured were not enough of a buffer zone and that the chance was actually there to 'export' the Communist revolution to the whole of Europe? How might that have unfolded? What might have happened to the (mostly) US forces who were already a long way in to Germany at the time (even though their leaders were duped by Stalin into holding back from a full-power rush to Berlin themselves)? How might the US have reacted and how might the Russians have been stopped (presuming of course, our sympathies lie with the West here, shall we say)? That's the set-up and a good one it is at that. However, while I enjoyed reading the book and at no time found it poor reading, I did feel that it was one of missed opportunities. One which, in better hands could have been a lot more satisfying. Conroy is an entirely competent writer, it seems, but the story deserved someone better. He shows the broad picture, the big plans, the leaders and the generals deciding policy, but he also manages to focus in on the soldiers and the (German) civilians caught at the sharp end and paying in their own blood, the price of the generals' broad strategic sweeps. As I say, there's no shortage of interesting ideas, but perhaps my problems with the book can be pretty much traced back to the fact that it just isn't long enough. This can't be a short story and with so many different elements necessarily having to be involved, it really needed to be (at least) twice as long to fully do the story justice. To fully develop the ideas, possibilities (and not least) the characters, but also the ethical questions raised and the psychological possibilities he begins, but hasn't space or possibly ability, to develop properly. So, not deep enough, not broad enough and not long enough. A 'what if?' alternative history that was entertaining enough, but left me wondering 'what if, it'd been written by Max Hastings or Anthony Beevor?' inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Priser
Fiction.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: In April 1945, the Allies are charging toward Berlin from the west, the Russians from the east. For Hitler, the situation is hopeless. But at this turning point in history, another war is about to explode. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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This is not to say that this is not an enjoyable book, as fans of Conroy’s alternate novels will find the author firing on every cylinder that he has within these pages. But it seems that with the fifth novel (and his third consecutive one set in the Second World War) Conroy’s creative well is running dry and he is beginning to recycle earlier ideas in a slightly refreshed setting. In his “Acknowledgments” section at the end of the book he expresses his hope that this will not be the last alternate history novel he writes; while I'm sure it wasn't, I hope that he put more time into giving readers something new and different, rather than just warming over his earlier work. ( )